
Butter
A Novel of Food and Murder
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Narrated by:
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Hanako Footman
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By:
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Asako Yuzuki
About this listen
The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer, and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story
There are two things that I simply cannot tolerate: feminists and margarine.
Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in the Tokyo Detention House convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, whom she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination, but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew, and Kajii can’t resist writing back.
Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a master class in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii, but it seems that Rika might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body. Do she and Kajii have more in common than she once thought?
Inspired by the real case of a convicted con woman and serial killer—the “Konkatsu Killer”—Asako Yuzuki’s Butter is a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance, and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan.
©2024 Asako Yuzuki (P)2024 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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The story is good but the performance is lacking
- By Juliana on 10-24-24
By: Banana Yoshimoto, and others
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All the Lovers in the Night
- By: Mieko Kawakami
- Narrated by: Mirai
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Fuyuko Irie is a freelance copyeditor in her mid-thirties. Working and living alone in a city where it is not easy to form new relationships, she has little regular contact with anyone other than her editor, Hijiri, a woman of the same age but with a very different disposition. When Fuyoku stops one day on a Tokyo street and notices her reflection in a storefront window, what she sees is a drab, awkward, and spiritless woman who has lacked the strength to change her life and decides to do something about it.
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Enjoyable listen
- By Rose on 05-16-22
By: Mieko Kawakami
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Mina's Matchbox
- A Novel
- By: Yoko Ogawa, Stephen B. Snyder - translator
- Narrated by: Nanako Mizushima
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the spring of 1972, twelve-year-old Tomoko leaves her mother behind in Tokyo and boards a train alone for Ashiya, a coastal town in Japan, to stay with her aunt’s family. Tomoko’s aunt is an enigma and an outlier in her working-class family, and her magnificent home—and handsome foreign husband, the president of a soft drink company—are symbols of that status. The seventeen rooms are filled with German-made furnishings; there are sprawling gardens and even an old zoo where the family’s pygmy hippopotamus resides.
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Very Enjoyable
- By unco on 09-03-24
By: Yoko Ogawa, and others
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Biography of X
- A Novel
- By: Catherine Lacey
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 14 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When X—an iconoclastic artist and shape-shifter—falls dead in her office, her widow CM, wild with grief, hurls herself into writing X's biography. Though X was recognized as a crucial creative force of her era, she kept a tight grip on her life story. In CM's quest to unravel it, she opens a Pandora’s box of secrets and destruction. All the while, she immerses herself in the history of the Southern Territory, a fascist theocracy that split from the rest of the country after World War II, as it is finally, in the present day, forced into an uneasy reunification.
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Worst book I’ve ever read
- By Rebecca on 11-09-23
By: Catherine Lacey
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Revenge
- Eleven Dark Tales
- By: Yoko Ogawa
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith, Johanna Parker
- Length: 4 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
An aspiring writer moves into a new apartment and discovers that her landlady has murdered her husband. Elsewhere, an accomplished surgeon is approached by a cabaret singer, whose beautiful appearance belies the grotesque condition of her heart. And while the surgeon's jealous lover vows to kill him, a violent envy also stirs in the soul of a lonely craftsman. Desire meets with impulse and erupts, attracting the attention of the surgeon's neighbor - who is drawn to a decaying residence that is now home to instruments of human torture.
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Maybe, more Gray then Dark?
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 10-28-14
By: Yoko Ogawa
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The List
- A Novel
- By: Yomi Adegoke
- Narrated by: Sheila Atim, Arinzé Kene
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Ola Olajide, a celebrated journalist at Womxxxn magazine, is set to marry the love of her life. Young, beautiful, and successful, she and her fiancé, Michael, are considered the “couple goals” of their social network and seem to have it all. That is, until one morning when they both wake up to the same message: “Oh my god, have you seen The List?”
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Brilliant Look at Me Too Movement
- By T. Thomas on 10-31-23
By: Yomi Adegoke
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Piglet
- A Novel
- By: Lottie Hazell
- Narrated by: Rebekah Hinds
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Outside of a childhood nickname she can’t shake, Piglet’s rather pleased with how her life’s turned out. An up-and-coming cookbook editor at a London publishing house, she’s got lovely, loyal friends and a handsome fiancé, Kit, whose rarefied family she actually, most of the time, likes, despite their upper-class eccentricities. One of the many, many things Kit loves about Piglet is the delicious, unfathomably elaborate meals she’s always cooking.
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Revelation through Food
- By M.A. on 10-07-24
By: Lottie Hazell
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There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job
- By: Kikuko Tsumura, Polly Barton - translator
- Narrated by: Cindy Kay
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A young woman walks into an employment agency and requests a job that has the following traits: It’s close to her home, and it requires no reading, no writing, and, ideally, very little thinking. Her first gig - watching the hidden-camera feed of an author suspected of storing contraband goods - turns out to be inconvenient. Her next gives way to the supernatural: announcing advertisements for shops that mysteriously disappear. As she moves from job to job, it becomes increasingly apparent that she's not searching for the easiest job at all but something altogether more meaningful.
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I LOVED it
- By Rose on 09-29-21
By: Kikuko Tsumura, and others
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Earthlings
- A Novel
- By: Sayaka Murata
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
As a child, Natsuki doesn’t fit into her family. Her parents favor her sister, and her best friend is a plush toy hedgehog named Piyyut who has explained to her that he has come from the planet Popinpobopia on a special quest to help her save the Earth.
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Intriguing but disturbing
- By C. Parham on 01-01-21
By: Sayaka Murata
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The Nakano Thrift Shop
- A Novel
- By: Hiromi Kawakami, Allison Markin Powell - translator
- Narrated by: Alexandra Bailey
- Length: 6 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Objects for sale at the Nakano Thrift Shop appear as commonplace as the staff and customers that handle them. But like those same customers and staff, they hold many secrets. If examined carefully, they show the signs of innumerable extravagancies, of immeasurable pleasure and pain, and of the deep mysteries of the human heart.
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Entire book is a dialogue of he said she said
- By mz on 01-03-19
By: Hiromi Kawakami, and others
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Cloud of Sparrows
- By: Takashi Matsuoka
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 15 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In 1861, foreign ships have forced open Japan's doors to the West. Missionaries have come to Japan; they are there to save men's souls, but to the Japanese they are there to spread false religion. The young Lord Genji, who possesses the power of prophecy, flees to the Cloud of Sparrows castle, where he shelters two American missionaries. Together with a legendary swordsman and an enigmatic geisha, they embark on a harrowing journey through a dangerous landscape to prepare for a final battle.
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Interesting but...
- By Blackmac on 06-10-06
By: Takashi Matsuoka
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The Echo Wife
- By: Sarah Gailey
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 8 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Martine is a genetically cloned replica made from Evelyn Caldwell’s award-winning research. She’s patient and gentle and obedient. She’s everything Evelyn swore she’d never be. And she’s having an affair with Evelyn’s husband. Now, the cheating bastard is dead, and both Caldwell wives have a mess to clean up. Good thing Evelyn Caldwell is used to getting her hands dirty.
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So many levels
- By Rachelle on 02-18-21
By: Sarah Gailey
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Strange Weather in Tokyo
- A Novel
- By: Hiromi Kawakami, Allison Markin Powell - translator
- Narrated by: Allison Hiroto
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Tsukiko, 38, works in an office and lives alone. One night, she happens to meet one of her former high school teachers, "Sensei", in a local bar. Tsukiko had only ever called him "Sensei" ("Teacher"). He is 30 years her senior, retired, and presumably a widower. Their relationship develops from a perfunctory acknowledgment of each other as they eat and drink alone at the bar, to a hesitant intimacy, which tilts awkwardly and poignantly into love.
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Cozy Love Story and Leisure Time in Japan
- By mz on 01-02-19
By: Hiromi Kawakami, and others
The narrators voice
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Story with Depth
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Interesting look at societal pressure in Japan
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The toast she makes at the turkey dinner could have been summed up with “Thsnks to Manako Kaji opening a curiosity in me about food, it has also helped me find all of you!”.
Rice with butter and soy is a taste revelation!
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Beautifully Written Story
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enjoyable, subtly feminist, read
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A bit hard to follow
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Quite a journey, loved and hated at times
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A Beautiful & Sensuous Telling
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Amazing
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